


Nothing Lasts

by ElvisRose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dad!Dean, Daddy Issues, Dysfunctional Family, Family Bonding, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff, Leviathans, M/M, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Monsters - Freeform, Pre-Season/Series 08, Protective Benny, Protective Castiel, Purgatory, Work In Progress, Working title
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-09
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-16 17:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2279121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElvisRose/pseuds/ElvisRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were some things that Dean hadn’t told Sam about purgatory</p>
<p>Emma being one of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Draw

**Author's Note:**

> Yay! My first fic on this site! This story is ongoing and will be updated as regularly as work and school permit. Title may change. As may the tags. Next chapter is going to be from Dean's POV

She doesn’t belong in Purgatory. Not really. She’s half human after all. Half Hunter. This place…it makes her skin crawl. She doesn’t know how long she’s been here. It could have been months, years, decades. She doesn’t know. All she knows is the never ending war and the bleakness of this place. She’s been here longer than she’d been alive. 

Three days. She was on the human plane three days before her uncle shot her. 

Sometimes when it stormed really badly, the bullet wound in her stomach twinged, hard, reminding her always of her uncle. An uncle whose name she didn't even know. All she knew was that He was named Dean and that he’d watched her die.

Let her die.

Sometimes, when she has a chance to rest, she likes to daydream. She imagines what life would have been like if she had been wanted. If he had kept her. If she hadn't tried to kill him. Would he take her out for ice-cream? Movies? Fishing? Would they mock people together? Normal father-daughter things? She didn't know. She hardly even knew what humans did.

All she knew was what the Amazonians had told her. That stories told around campfires, of what these monsters remembered of their human lives. 

All she knew is that she wanted it. She wanted it bad.

So the first time she heard the rumor that Dean Winchester was in Purgatory, she was curious. 

This name, so like her fathers, invoked fear in the hearts of monsters like herself. They quivered and shook when his name was whispered. The younger ones cried when stories were told of the Winchester brothers, Dean and Sam, crisscrossing the country and slaughtering their kind like…well…monsters. 

She’d heard tell of the brothers before. Many times. She secretly enjoyed their stories. Campfire horror stories, monster edition. People always loved to try and outdo each other with tales of how they came to be in Purgatory. Some simply died of old age. Others were hunted down and murdered. Some died in car crashes, accidentally tripping and impaling themselves, etc. 

Emma, herself, had met many of the creatures that the Winchester brothers had killed. On the particular night that she learned of Dean’s stay-cation in Purgatory, she was around the fire with Mamma and her nest? Coven?

Emma was still vague on the politically correct terms to be applied to things like herself.

Mamma had been dead over fifteen years. Killed by John Winchester and his sons. Not many people talked about the Winchester’s father. Which Emma found odd. Stevie had told her that he was once the most feared hunter but was quickly surpassed by his bloodthirsty sons. Hunters were the monsters here. Being part Hunter was too dangerous for this place, and as such she had never told anyone that her daddy was a Hunter. 

They knew he was human but a Hunter…that was asking for death. A more permanent death that this place of rot and decay couldn't offer. 

Mamma had been regaling her audience with a tale of the great Charlie Chaplin when Heather tripped through the underbrush, panting and wheezing like a goddamned asthmatic horse with a kazoo. Emma winced at Heather’s harsh coughs. Apparently chain smoking still affected you in the afterlife.

“Winchester…” she wheezed. “In…Purgatory.” 

The crackling of the fire was soon overtaken with panic as the eighteen or so people around it scattered. 

“Why?” Mamma asked, fearfully, cradling her young sons to her chest. Heather held up a finger and collapsed onto the bracken, trying to catch her breath. The others were long gone by now. By morn half of Purgatory would know that there was a Winchester in Purgatory.

If they didn't know already.

Emma looked at Mamma, wondering what would happen now. 

“I wonder which of those poor boys it is.” Mamma mumbled to herself, sending her twins off to their cave where it was safe. Emma raised an eyebrow and said nothing; Mamma never did need much prodding to speak. “I met those two babies when their daddy killed me.” Mamma sighed, brushing her black curls back and hissing at a snarl.

“The little ‘un, you could tell he didn't like the Huntin’ life.” Mamma said, tugging at the snarl with her claws. “It was plain as day in his little face, that he wanted out of that lifestyle. He couldn’ta been more than twelve.” She snarled triumphantly as she shredded the offending knot.

“The older one, now he was different. He was a lot like John, seemed to enjoy it, he did.” A sigh. “Poor little man. He was right scared of his father, that one. Twitched every time his daddy raised his voice. He wanted out too. Hid it good though. Real good.” She frowned at the flames. Emma wondered about her own father. Was he this fabled Dean Winchester?

The thought had crossed her mind many times. But if he wanted out…maybe they could get out, together. 

“I could see it in that one’s eyes. He hated himself. Even then. Poor boy was probably only sixteen. What a way to grow up.” Mamma closed her eyes and shuddered, even though she was numb to the cold by now. “He didn't like the life but he was already too deep in it. Couldn’t live any other way.” 

With a noise that sounded like a dying Valkyrie, Heather pulled herself up and in front of the fire. Some species just didn't numb to the cold here. Emma herself was numb but occasionally a swift breeze would cut through hand chill her to the bone. She had her human DNA to thank for that. 

She felt a vindictive kind of pleasure, watching Heather suffer.

“He’s lookin for an angel.” Heather said, kicking one of the never ending twigs this place provided. “Teamed up with Benny.” Momma rolled her eyes and Emma smirked. “He’s promising Winchester a way out.”

“Is that possible?” Emma asked, searchingly. Oh how she yearned for the human world.

“Not for us.” Mamma sighed. “Only humans can get outta this place.”

"Benny says there's a way." Heather coughed into the flames. Emma grimaced at the ill mannered shifter. 

"Benny Lafitte is an old fool." Mamma said firmly, glaring at Heather.

Emma had stuck with Mamma for most of her stay in Purgatory, but now seemed like a good time to branch out on her own. She had to know for herself if Dean Winchester was her father.

And what better way to do that than to find him?


	2. The Wanderer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! new chapter! Thanks for the kudos guys. You know whats better than kudos? Comments!

The trees had eyes. Its sounds like some shitty horror film. But it’s true. Dean could feel them, the hairs on the back of his neck raised because of them. The trees had eyes, and they were watching him. Of that he was absolutely certain. Since he had landed in Purgatory there wasn’t a moment where he didn’t feel like he was being watched. It was a never ending sense of unease that tugged on his bones, trying to drag him down into the desolate soil that was fertilized with the blood of monsters. 

It left him with an unending sense of fatigue that numbed after a while. Benny explained that that was just Purgatory. It’s numbs you to the pain, the aches the hunger. After a while you don’t even feel it. The cold hardly affected Dean these days, hunger was nonexistent, but exhaustion? That didn’t seem to end. It was a painful sort of numb. Like when your leg falls asleep and you try to walk on it.

It left him dizzy and wincing as he made his way through this strange new hell. Each day was the same, wake up, fight tooth and nail through the trees, sleep, and rinse, repeat. It was so damned repetitive that he was operating on auto pilot now. Everything was a different shade of brown or gray. He felt like he was living in a goddamned black and white horror movie. 

That being said, there was a certain type of clarity, purity, in this endless forest. It was pure in its anger and vengeance. It was righteous in its fury. Everything here was monstrous and evil, yet free from corruption. When everything is corrupt…nothing is. There are no social barriers, no judging neighbors, no right, no wrong. No one was good. No one was bad. They just were. 

And all they were, was enemies, threats.

They stood in the way and he wanted them gone. He could slaughter these beasts by the droves without fear of the FBI, Sam’s legendary bitchfaces, no one here could stop him in his quest to find his angel and get the hell out of here. And now he had one half of his quest complete.

Purgatory was pure decay.

And right now he was the king of garage.

Gossip spread throughout Purgatory like European diseases had spread throughout the Americas. By now, all of Purgatory had to know that Dean was here. It made Benny uncomfortable. He could see that. By helping Dean, Benny had alienated himself. He was hunted now. He’d been here decades and had lived in peace with these people. And now he was public enemy number two.

Dean himself was responsible for putting a lot of these people here. He knew that. But he didn’t regret it. Sure some of them were innocent. He’d killed them back when things were black and white. A few had forgiven him. Like Sam’s friend Amy. She forgave Dean but she brought with her some memories that Dean had buried in the deepest recess of his mind. 

A place where thoughts of his mom, his dad’s abuse and his feelings for Cas, ranked among his top secrets. Things he didn’t even want to think about.  
Amy’s forgiveness brought back the memory of riding in the Impala, Sam at the wheel:

“Alright, fine. Just sit there and be pissed.” Dean scowled at Sam and sulked.

“What did you say to me... when I was the one who choked? What did you say about Amy? ‘You kill the monster!’” Sam snarled.

“I was going to!” Dean pleaded weakly. 

“Oh, the hell you were! You think I'm an idiot?”

“What, you think I am?”

“Dean, you were gonna let her walk!” Sam growled bitterly.

“No, I wasn't. That's ridiculous!” Even then he knew it was a lie. He just said it to placate Sam, though it left an acrid taste in his mouth.

“Look, man, she was not yours. Not really.” Sam sighed, placatingly.

“Actually, she, uh, she was, really. She just also happened to be a crazy man-killing monster. But, uh, hey.” Dean shrugged, looking out the window.

 

Dean was jerked from his thoughts by Benny twitching and scowling at the trees. Cas came walking back from the stream, face scrubbed and beard bristling. He and Benny traded scowls before he sat next to Dean. Eyeing the tree line.

“It’s good to see you, man.” Dean said, allowing a small smile. Cas smiled back but his heart wasn't in it. Dean could see the way his eyes lacked their usual sparkle. He sighed and looked back at the campfire. Cas wasn’t his Cas. He was something else. Something new and broken. He wasn't Emmanuel, he wasn't Cas hopped up on Sam’s crazy juice. He was just a broken little angel. A shadow of the soldier of God that had dragged Dean from hell.

Dean was going to be the one doing the dragging this time. He knew it in his bones.

A twig snapped in the woods to their left and three men jumped up to stare into the glowing eyes of a blonde teenage girl. Benny growled, unsheathing his fangs. Cas gripped his angel blade and glared with powers of heaven. The girl seemed to declare Benny as the greatest threat. Her eyes tinged with red and small fangs sprouted in her mouth. She hissed at Benny but stumbled back when Cas took a step forward.

Dean held out a hand and Benny and Cas immediately fell behind him. They eyed the girl uncertainty but trusted Dean’s judgment. As Dean approached the eyes faded back to hazel, her fangs retracted and she shook with uncertainty.

“Emma?” Dean’s voice cracked.


End file.
